Fools and Mortals. Bernard Cornwell

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ office, eh?’

      ‘It frequently does, my lord,’ my brother said.

      ‘And the Queen likes her Pursuivants,’ the Lord Chamberlain continued. ‘She doesn’t want some bloody Jesuit slitting her throat, which is understandable, and Piggy Price is damned good at sniffing the buggers out. He’s valued by Her Majesty. I told him to leave you alone, but the moment he smells sedition he’ll let loose the dogs, and if they succeed in finding it then even I can’t protect you.’

      ‘Sedition, my lord?’ my brother sounded puzzled.

      ‘You heard me, Master Shakespeare. Sedition.’

      ‘We’re players, my lord, not plotters.’

      ‘He claimed you’re harbouring copies of A Conference.’ The accusation was hard and sharp, spoken in a quite different tone to his lordship’s previous remarks. ‘He has been informed, reliably he tells me, that you distribute copies of the damned book to your audiences.’

      ‘We do what, my lord?’ my brother asked in amazement.

      We are players. We pretend, and by pretending, we persuade. If a man were to ask me whether I had stolen his purse I would give him a look of such shocked innocence that even before I offered a reply he would know the answer, and all the while his purse would be concealed in my doublet.

      Yet at that moment we had no need to pretend. I doubt many of us knew what his lordship meant by ‘A Conference’, and so most of us just looked puzzled or worried. My brother plainly knew, but he also looked puzzled, even disbelieving. If we had been pretending at that moment then it would have been the most convincing performance ever given at the Theatre, more than sufficient to persuade the Lord Chamberlain that we were innocent of whatever sin he had levelled at us. My brother, frowning, shook his head. ‘My lord,’ he bowed low, ‘we do no such thing!’

      James Burbage must have known what ‘A Conference’ was because he also bowed, and then, as he straightened, spread his hands. ‘Search the playhouse, my lord.’

      ‘Ha!’ Lord Hunsdon treated that invitation with the derision it deserved. ‘You’ll have hidden the copies by now. You take me for a fool?’

      My brother spoke earnestly. ‘We do not possess a copy, my lord, nor have we ever possessed one.’

      His lordship smiled suddenly. ‘Master Shakespeare, I don’t give the quills off a duck’s arse if you do have one. Just hide the damned thing well. Have you read it?’

      My brother hesitated, then nodded. ‘Yes, my lord.’

      ‘So have I. But if Piggy Price’s men do find a copy here, you’ll all end up in the Marshalsea. All of you! My cousin,’ he meant the Queen, ‘will tolerate much, but she cannot abide that book.’

      The Marshalsea is a prison south of the Thames, not far from the Rose playhouse, which is home to the Lord Admiral’s men with whom our company have a friendly rivalry. ‘My lord,’ my brother still spoke slowly and carefully, ‘we have never harboured a copy.’

      ‘I can’t see why you should.’ Lord Hunsdon was suddenly cheerful again. ‘It’s none of your damned business, is it? Fairies and lovers are your business, eh?’

      ‘Indeed they are, my lord.’

      Lord Hunsdon clicked his fingers, and the thin retainer unbuckled his satchel and took out a sheaf of papers. ‘I like it,’ Lord Hunsdon said, though not entirely convincingly.

      ‘Thank you, my lord,’ my brother responded cautiously.

      ‘I didn’t read it all,’ his lordship said, taking the papers from the thin man, ‘but I liked what I read. Especially that business at the end. Pyramid and Thimble. Very good!’

      ‘Thank you,’ my brother said faintly.

      ‘But my wife read it. She says it’s a marvel. A marvel!’

      My brother looked lost for words.

      ‘And it’s her ladyship’s opinion that counts,’ Lord Hunsdon went on. ‘I’d have preferred a few fights myself, maybe a stabbing or two, a slit throat perhaps? But I suppose blood and weddings don’t mix?’

      ‘They are ill-suited, my lord,’ my brother managed to say, taking the offered pages from his lordship.

      ‘But there is one thing. My wife noticed that it doesn’t have a title yet.’

      ‘I was thinking …’ my brother began, then hesitated.

      ‘Yes? Well?’

      ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream, my lord.’

      ‘A midsummer night’s what?’ Lord Hunsdon asked, frowning. ‘But the bloody wedding will be in midwinter. In February!’

      ‘Precisely so, my lord.’

      There was a pause, then Lord Hunsdon burst out laughing. ‘I like it! Upon my soul, I do. It’s all bloody nonsense, isn’t it?’

      ‘Nonsense, my lord?’ my brother enquired delicately.

      ‘Fairies! Pyramids and thimbles! That fellow turning into a donkey!’

      ‘Oh yes, all nonsense, my lord,’ my brother said. ‘Of course.’ He bowed again.

      ‘But the womenfolk like nonsense, so it’s fit for a wedding. Fit for a wedding! If that bloody man Price troubles you again without cause, let me know. I’ll happily strangle the bastard.’ His lordship waved genially, then turned and walked from the playhouse, followed by his retainers.

      And my brother was laughing.

      ‘It is nonsense,’ my brother said. As ever, when he talked to me, he sounded distant. When I had run away from home and had first found him in London, he had greeted me with a bitter chill that had not changed over the years. ‘His lordship was right. What we do is nonsense,’ he said now.

      ‘Nonsense?’

      ‘We do not work, we play. We are players. We have a playhouse.’ He spoke to me as if I were a small child who had annoyed him with my question. It was the day after Lord Hunsdon’s visit to the Theatre, and my brother had sent me a message asking me to go to his lodgings, which were then in Wormwood Street, just inside the Bishopsgate. He was sitting at his table beneath the window, writing; his quill scratching swiftly across a piece of paper. ‘Other people,’ he went on, though he did not look at me, ‘other people work. They dig ditches, they saw wood, they lay stone, they plough fields. They hedge, they sew, they milk, they churn, they spin, they draw water, they work. Even Lord Hunsdon works. He was a soldier. Now he has heavy responsibilities to the Queen. Almost everyone works, brother, except us. We play.’ He slid one piece of paper aside and took a clean sheet from a pile beside his table. I tried to see what he was writing, but he hunched forward and hid it with his shoulder.

      I waited for him to tell me why I had been summoned, but he went on writing, saying nothing. ‘So what’s a conference?’ I asked him.

      ‘A conference is commonly an occasion where people confer together.’

СКАЧАТЬ